This is my quilt #126, Squares and Sparks. I finished this about a month back, but I wanted to share with you how I made it. So, here is a free quilt pattern/ free quilt tutorial. I have not written down the amount of fabric you’ll need, so it is not perfect, but I have included a paper piecing template.

I purchased a fabric line by Debra Valencia called “Silk Road” a while back. I knew I wanted to make a quilt for my daughter, but a lot of the fabrics had very large prints.

This design was my way of solving the “large print” problem. The large print fabrics are cut into squares and separated by white background fabric within a web of interconnected “sparks.”

This is my original sketch. In the real quilt, I added an additional white border to the outside, but I didn’t have enough room on this piece of paper to show the complete blocks. I was going to have the Silk Road fabric be the entire 6×6 inch block, but after looking at it, I realized that there needed to be a little bit of distance between the sparks and the squares, so I added a half inch border all around the block. That is why they are now square-in-square.

(You can eliminate cutting the 32 background rectangles and 32 background squares if you just want to add your own border at the end. You can instead use two 74.5 x 4.5 inch strip and two 86.5 x 4.5 inch strips as the border. I like to have the seams as guidelines in putting together the quilt top, so even though it is extra work, it is work that I prefer.)

You will also need to construct two different types of hourglass blocks. 82 hour glass blocks need to have two edges be spark fabric, and two edges be background fabric. 28 hour glass blocks need only one edge to be spark fabric. Here is how to make it.

First, download this PDF and print off on your computer. Each page should have 4 templates on them, and you should need 55 pages of templates for a total of 220 templates. If you have never paper pieced before, please look at this tutorial before you start. Make sure the edges of the paper piecing template are 6.5 inches by 4.5 inches.

For the 82 hourglass blocks with two spark fabric, sew together two paper pieced triangles with the background in position 1 and the spark fabric in position 2.

For the 28 hourglass blocks with only one triangle of spark fabric, sew together two paper pieced triangles, one with the background in position 1 and spark fabric in position 2, the other with the background fabric in both positions 1 and 2. (see image above).

This means you will need a total of 192 triangle templates with both spark and background fabric and 28 triangle templates with two background fabrics. (Yes, you can use the paper piecing template to cut 28 triangles out of the background template, if you don’t want to paper piece those particular templates).

Time to sew the blocks together. First, arrange your square in square blocks how you want them to be in the quilt. Then, follow these guidelines in sewing your blocks together to make rows:

Then, we sew the rows together to make the quilt top. This quilt top should be about 74 inches by 94 inches before washing.

I backed mine with this wonderful shiny and soft aqua colored minky, and quilted it using a double loopty-loop design. My daughter chose this sweet pink flower print as the binding.

She put it on her bed as soon as I washed it, and she loves it. Just in time for winter!

If you choose to make this quilt, please let me know how it went. I would love to see it!

Amazing block design — you just saved me endless cutting and piecing because as I looked at your cute quilt I thought, “2 Peak and Spikeys to make the hourglass.” But you did it on the diagonal. Brilliant!